Performance & Insights Lead

This year, Scottish Water’s Capital Investment Programme aims to spend over £1bn on our water and waste networks, so that when our customers turn on their taps, they get safe, clean drinking water, and when they flush the Three Ps (that’s poo, pee and paper), it’s all whisked away and carefully treated to make it safe.

On the ground that means thousands of projects and people, maintaining over 60,000 miles of pipes and 2,000 water and waste treatment works. We provide services to 2.6m households and more than 150,000 business premises, so we need to work efficiently with minimal disruption, and spend wisely to give our customers value for money.

We’re also committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2040, having already reduced our operational carbon footprint by 41% since 2006. With all these projects on the go, we rely on our PMO team to keep everything on track.

What you’ll do

In a nutshell, the Performance Insights Lead attends meetings with our delivery teams, armed with a lot of data in the form of our Power BI reports. Their goal is to monitor how we’re doing against our targets, at individual project level and also across the Programme as a whole.

You’ll be looking at how we performed in the month (what did we say we’d do vs what did we actually do?), check how we’re doing against our annual “baseline” targets, and against measures reported to the Regulator. You’ll add further value with trend analysis and predicted out-turns based on current performance levels, and identify future challenges such as an unusual peak in spend. You’ll also gather intelligence on why projects are delivered early or late, to feed into lessons learned.

Finally, in career terms, the role involves both working closely with senior leaders in Scottish Water and the coaching and development of our analysts, making it a great platform for your own future development.

What you’ll need

• You’ll have experience in a data-led project or programme role – ideally in a PMO capacity.
• Since you’ll be speaking at a lot of meetings, it’s important that you enjoy presenting and know how to keep your audience engaged and respond to challenging questions.
• You are good at analysing and interpreting complex data and relaying key messages in an easy-to-understand manner.
• You’ll have good prioritisation and time-management skills, as we’re constantly juggling plates.
• It will be helpful if you have a technical background in data analytics, but you’ll be working with a team of Analysts, helping them prioritise and allocate work.

Looking out for you

While the work we do is important, we know it’s not the only thing that matters. That’s why we make sure you have everything you need to find a good work-life balance. The normal working hours for this role are Monday to Friday from 9-5. But you’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take paid time off to volunteer in your community.

When it comes to major life events we have family-friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working. For your future, there’s our pension, as well as life assurance. As for some nice extras? You can expect an annual company bonus. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.

The not-so-small print

This role can be based flexibly in the central belt of Scotland, ideally with the ability to travel to one of our main offices in Glasgow or Edinburgh. From 1st April 2024 Scottish Water moved to a new grading and pay structure. This role will be a Grade 7, with a salary range from £41,000 to £51,970. New external hires will normally be expected to join on the minimum salary.

If you’re interested in this role – or know someone else who might be - we’ll be accepting applications until midnight on 9th July 2025. Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre-employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, license checks, etc. These checks are conducted on our behalf by a third party. Don’t worry - we’ll ask your permission before starting these checks.

A few final things worth knowing… Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria. If you’re interested in this job, but don’t tick all the boxes, apply anyway! We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One. Everyone has a learning curve. So don’t rule yourself out!

Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best. Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions. We’re also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.

As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you’ll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.

Finally, candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted.

We’re here to help.